Dream Less, Do More, and Create Real Happiness with Mark Manson and Lewis Howes

i'm a big proponent of just vulnerability in general and the thing that that makes vulnerability so important and so powerful is that it creates a transparency and a trust between everybody involved you know when you're willing to expose your weaknesses or at least be honest about them it it helps people know that you're dependable you know it's like okay this guy like i can trust something that comes out of his mouth [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome everyone back to the school of greatness podcast we've got mark manson in the house good to see you man how you doing it's good to be here i'm pumped uh i've been learning about your stuff for a while now you've been writing along online for a long time amazing articles you have an amazing website where you publish all your content and now you have a new book out that is a massive hit already uh big new york time best seller i think it's been on the list for how long now basically since it came out basically since it came out so like nine months nine months every single week or is it dropped off every single week every single week nine months the subtle art of not giving a [ __ ] a counter-intuitive approach to living a good life make sure you guys pick it up right now if you haven't got it we're gonna dive into this and a lot more today i'm super pumped about this you're good okay super pumped about this we've got some mutual friends um you you're you're not really out there publicly that much though like on social media you post your stuff but you're not like yeah i'm i'm bad at that i'm bad at self-promotion i'm not like i i've just yeah my wife's always bugging she's like why don't you use your instagram okay right you'll never do you have like 30 000 followers i was like oh yeah i should take pictures it's funny you're like well when i'm on the new york times list every week right you don't have to promote it i guess when you write that great of a book it speaks for itself um very excited about this why did you decide to start talking about this you know why did you write a book a counter-intuitive approach to living a great life and a lot of things you say in here i want to get into because i'm like huh yeah is that all true or whatever um i wanted to write i decided a couple years ago i really wanted to write a self-help book about pain because there's a lot of self-help books out there that about positivity and growth and you know striving and i wanted to talk about the sucky things in life and i wanted to make an argument that i guess negative negative experience or negativity it matters like you can't you can't just pretend like it's not there you can't just go through your life can't you say positive thinking no matter what yeah like it's every no matter how successful you get no matter how famous you get no matter how much money you make no matter how awesome your relationships are things are gonna suck sometimes no matter what and you're never gonna avoid that and so kind of my starting point with this is like all right so let's talk about what it's like to have things suck um and how can we not necessarily get rid of that or solve it but like just live through it better suffer better suffer better yeah do you believe we can end our suffering uh no why not um well i talk about it in the book i i make the point that you know pain exists for a reason like we evolve pain for a reason because it it you know if you think of like a little kid touching a hot stove like that's actually a really important experience it teaches the kid don't touch a hot stove anymore like that's gonna that that's dangerous it's gonna hurt you yeah yeah exactly and so pain evolved to kind of show us like what's dangerous and what's not you know what what can threaten us or or what could harm us and what what doesn't so pain's not necessarily a bad thing like pain can actually be a very important and beneficial thing depending on the context and the circumstances and so yeah it's it's it's a necessity in life i would argue so as is i agree the pain is a necessity do you think this that suffering is a necessity um well are you defining suffering as like the meaning we attach to pain or like how would you say ongoing pain okay they're like okay you've touched the stove and you felt the pain yeah for 30 seconds do you need to hold and be attached to that pain for the next day or a week or a month and be like oh i tell you this thing it hurts i'm going to hold on to this pain i don't think suffering is it's not so in a very broad like just if we're looking at somebody's whole lifetime yeah i think so because there there's there are there's always going to be some things in your life that you know say a parent dies um or divorce or something like that is gonna cause suffering and i think it's okay for that to cause stuff like i think it's normal i would argue it's healthy for that to cause suffering because just the experience of loss you have to you have to be attached to that pain because it was such an important part of your life that said i do think probably a very large percentage of suffering in life probably a large percentage of the suffering that uh a lot of us go through is not necessary right it's self-invented or it's we create it um to make ourselves feel more important or to make excuses for ourselves things like that yeah yeah so i learned from a famous meditation instructor uh krishna g who said that suffering is the obsessive self-centric thinking yeah and once we remove the obsessive self-centric thinking our suffering leaves us yeah so we can feel attached to this pain of a divorce or a loss in our life and we're constantly thinking about ourselves what we're we're missing what we're lacking what we you know had once that we don't have any more yeah but once we remove that obsessive thinking about what we don't have anymore the suffering starts to end yeah so i think we it's a decision it's a choice that we can make at any moment we could hold on to that sense of thinking and longing for years yeah like i used to have this thing and now i don't have it anymore yeah i'm suffering or we can be aware and uh you know and say i'm moving forward yeah at any moment yeah i think there's a healthy balance to being like you know not just moving on when someone dies in the next of course yeah it's just like it's over yeah yeah it's interesting because you know and i i spend a lot of the book talking about this it's not necessarily you know the pleasure or pain that's important it's the meaning that we attach around it it's like it's the story that we invent to kind of encapsulate it and i think they're very healthy and positive story or i wouldn't say pot like they're very healthy stories and meanings that we can create around our pain and they're very unhealthy stories and meanings we can create around our pain and there's healthy meanings and stories that we can create around our our pleasure or our positive experiences and there's also unhealthy meaning and stories that we can create around our positive experiences and so you know kind of the whole crux of the book is like you know it's just all about that meaning it's all about what you know what values are you choosing like what what are you what is like the lesson you're pulling from all these experiences both you're good and you're bad because that's what matters you know if you just look at feeling good versus feeling bad your life's everybody's life is doing this all the time um you know what what stays constant and what like kind of keeps you your center of gravity like going the right direction is that sense of meaning or that those values that you build for yourself yeah i agree what would you say is the time where you suffered the most consciously i think my first girlfriend that first heartbreak that's the worst yeah um and and just the way it happened i mean she was cheating on me and i found out from like just like one of her friends just picked up the phone was like dude oh man you need to know about this um so yeah that was devastating that but probably like so that was the biggest conscious pain biggest unconscious one would probably be my parents divorce but that's one of those things that you don't you know you don't realize till you're like 20 26 and in therapy and you're like wow this really [ __ ] me up exactly yeah it's crazy how powerful our parents relationship affects us without us even knowing it yeah absolutely things we do say mimic without us even being aware yeah even if we don't think we're being like our parents we usually are yeah it's just embedded in our brains i guess right and our memory and our psyche or whatever it is and we repeat i see myself doing this all the time on like all the things that i was like i'm not going to be that way my dad is my mom is yeah and i see like a pattern sometimes with me doing i have to stop myself yeah like who do i want to be yeah you know i don't want to be i want to be like my parents in some ways but not everywhere yeah every way and how can i reinvent the process of a better way a better experience a better interaction with people than what i saw and mimicked every you know as a child so i definitely agree with that yeah um you talked about you went on a you went out a journey you've traveled over 60 countries yep you speak three languages you were in brazil for a couple of years met your wife there what are the your language spanish spanish but it's really rusty so portuguese you're better yeah i'm better at portuguese now and your wife do you guys speak portuguese a lot or she speak english fluently as well oh she's fluent in english um we i'd say it's like 80 20 english portuguese yeah um anything like serious is in english we flirt in portuguese oh really you're like we flirt oh yeah very good right we we flirt and talk [ __ ] in portuguese because it's nice because like you'll be in a situation and it's like you know somebody like does something and you want to say something but you don't want them to hear and so we just say it to each other like wow can you believe that guy just did that until they start speaking to you in portuguese yeah like i can hear you that's happened a couple really yeah that's embarrassing yeah there was actually the funniest one was we were in brazil once and uh we did like the worst uber driver ever and uh my wife like she was in a really bad mood and she just like starts talking [ __ ] about the uber driver in english like like five minutes no way and then we get to the destination uber driver turns around perfect english no accent it's like have a good night guys oh my gosh this guy hates us oh my goodness wow yeah now why did you decide to travel to you know all these different countries and explore the world um i read uh so i read tim ferriss's book back in 08 i guess me too um you know completely blew my mind opened everything and i always had kind of a dream of like doing like an around-the-world trip or something um and it was when i when i read that book you know around the same time i uh had a crappy day job and i wasn't happy with it and i was young and i knew i wanted to do something on my own um and i read four hour work week and it was like two birds with one stone it's like whoa i can like travel and build a business and build a business at the same time and so yeah i did that initially i was just gonna do it for a couple years but i kind of got hooked really and just kept going and going and going yeah and how are you able to make money as you were traveling and fund this experience for you um initially i started with i did kind of like direct marketing stuff so a lot of like affiliate sales and yeah um i was one of those obnoxious guy i was like spammy stuff and sure sure and um i actually started blogging it was because back then back in those days it was like uh everything was about like blogging was like the big new thing huge yeah yeah 2008 2009 yeah it's like if you if you're starting an internet business you got to have a blog because that's like that's how you get traffic to come in and everything so i started i started a blog um just to like drive traffic to some of my sites and and it it started to take off really and um yeah it turned like i discovered it took about two years i discovered i was a pretty crappy marketer like i don't sell stuff very well and i was always broke and like struggling and trying to find like the next thing that would pay the bills and then um and then when i started writing like things got a lot more steady and and consistent so um yeah i just stuck with the writing it's crazy man now you get what two million uh visitors a month or is it more now from the book i'm assuming well it varies quite a bit um it's interesting because blogs i feel like the traffic is just going down in blogs because everyone's on social media yeah it's like more people aren't clicking on the link to go read a whole article they'd rather read like a mini article on facebook or instagram i i feel blogging is in kind of like a recession right now really yeah it's it's across the board everybody's traffic's kind of shrinking a little bit mine's dropped maybe 20 25 in the last year wow um but like i know people it's dropped like 50 percent yeah people are struggling i feel like yeah if you're not constantly reinventing yourself like i think it was brilliant that you did this book at this time because it it brought you even more mainstream credibility and continues to attract new people to your sphere of your of your audience and people checking out your site now or your social yeah which you're never on instagram so you need to be more off but i think it's it's powerful because i think most people aren't willing to reinvent if you were doing the internet marketing spammy thing for a little bit and if you kept doing that you would have probably dropped off too yeah but you found a way to reinvent with blogging yeah and you stuck with that until you realize oh let me do the next stage yeah right yeah i think that's always important uh i was kind of a similar spot i was starting out in blogging i was teaching linkedin and i was like yes it's kind of dying and i did blogging and take courses and i was like i felt like podcasting was going to come around i was like hopefully you know you're in the right space now man it was it was like two years before it kind of started getting big when cereal came out and everyone else started to do them so i was like thank goodness i started early yeah but um but it's almost like now there's you know over half a million podcasts at least yeah so it's like what's the next reinvention yeah i'm always looking for the next reinvention so yeah you got to you got to keep looking ahead and and yeah i think looking back at my career one of the things that i think i did well um and i think most people need to do you know throughout their career is be very honest at like what you're good at what you're bad at and then double down on what you're good at yeah so you didn't start doing video after you launched your blog you were like i'm great at writing yeah it's working let me double down well yeah and i i tried i've tried video i've tried i even messed around tried podcasting a couple few years ago and you know i just i'm very honest with myself of like you know is this something either do i have a knack for it or is this something is the learning curve something i'm willing to invest like does it make sense you know so like for instance with podcasting i messed around with it did a couple like interviews privately and and played with like concept ideas and as with most things you know it's i you go into it thinking it's oh this could be simple and then you actually try it and you're like wow this is really a lot of work yeah and so i sat there and i'm like well this is gonna be you know probably six to 12 months learning curve at least yeah and um take time to build momentum yeah and is that something that makes sense to invest in right now or i could just like promote my book so you know the book went out uh yeah so i yeah it's hard but it's hard to be like honest with yourself a lot of times um and just be like yeah i'm bad at this right right i should yeah i should i should do i should do the thing i'm good at right you talk about being honest with yourself publicly and why it's powerful yeah why do you believe we should be honest with ourselves publicly and what does that mean um i'm a big proponent of just vulnerability in general um and and so yeah and so that that applies across the spectrum so our private relationships are public relationships um professional relationships everything and um the thing that that makes vulnerability so important and so powerful is that it um it creates a transparency and a trust between everybody involved um you know when you're willing to expose your weaknesses or at least be honest about them um it it helps people know that you're dependable you know it's like okay this guy like i can trust something that comes out of his mouth if you're if you're trying to make everything like rosy and sound amazing all the time and maybe fibbing a little bit or covering things up or like avoiding certain topics right you know people sense that and um and not only does it kind of prevent that that trust from building but it also um you know it it it makes you seem like aloof i don't know it kind of just interferes with the the depth of the connection the connection can never like get beyond a certain thing something's missing if someone's too perfect you know yeah there's something beneath that because no one can live that way yeah yeah um the example i i used an example in my book i'm like you know nobody likes a yes man and yet like if somebody's following you around just agreeing with everything you say you know within a couple weeks you're gonna be like what is what does he want you know like what's his angle he's trying to get something out of me sure um and you know so i i have a chapter it's called the importance to say no and um you know and that's kind of my big point is like you need to hear no and say no because then people know you're dependable they know you're you're actually like you know you have your own identity and you're not just like manipulating the situation yeah i think it's powerful to say no i say yes a lot to a lot of people yeah and then sometimes people just expect me to constantly say yes and i'm like no i can't do something and then they get mad at me yeah because yeah they have this expectation i'm supposed to do something for them all the time and i'm like i'm constantly giving to so many people yeah i'm constantly like promoting other people i'm constantly you know doing so much that sometimes i got to focus on my own stuff too of course well and if you don't then that will strangle your ability to give absolutely in the future you know like if you don't cut out that time for yourself and then nurture yourself then then you're not going to be able to right to be generous to others i think if you say yes to someone when you don't want to you're going to resent that person too totally so say no so you don't resent people yep right you also talk about this is something i wanted to dive into because you say you shouldn't have big dreams right yeah why well did i say shouldn't have big dreams i think you talked about big dreams and how is you can't be in the present when you have these big dreams um i'm trying to think of exactly maybe maybe i don't have the same maybe i'm not thinking clearly on it but what are your feelings on having big dreams i think we have them or no i i think they're fine i think dreams so dreams i would put in the category of they're fine but they're overrated dreams are overrated yeah um why is that because i think a lot of times we a lot of times we use our our our dreams and our fantasies as a way of kind of escaping what we're dealing with right now um and i think the other thing about dreams is it's actually very hard for us to know exactly what we want um like i can't tell you how many people i've met over the years that they're like uh like i want to run a business or i've got this amazing idea for a startup or i want to make a ton of money and you know they have this big dream for themselves and they start working towards it and it's like they make themselves like it's actually making them miserable because the actual process of doing it um is not what they enjoy they enjoy they and what what is actually happening is like you know they don't actually enjoy the the hustle or or taking the risk or or doing the work they enjoy what they think the benefit will do to their themselves you know so they're unhappy with a part of themselves like oh if i could just like have an amazing startup and be worth like 20 million dollars everything would be great but it turns out like they hate working on it yeah and and so it just makes things worse and so um i think dreams are fine like it's it's fun to fantasize but i think it's it's also important to just be honest about what dreams are is that they're fantasies they're fun um but a lot of them are motivated uh or they can easily be motivated by the wrong reasons um and so i prefer to kind of take more of a present approach of like okay let's pay attention to like how does this feel right now how does the work make you feel now um how how does accomplishing this task like how does that reflect on you like how do you feel about yourself after that um because i think if you pay attention to that that's actually what makes great things happen in your life is when you're like focusing on the day-to-day you know boom this makes me feel good that's what you get good at you know like i never sat down you asked me before we started recording you're like did you ever think you were going to be right i no i never thought i was going to be a writer the way i became a writer was i was doing all this stuff for my websites and i didn't enjoy about 70 of it right and most of the part that i enjoyed or that came came easily to me that you know that that part of my work that i would sit down you know thinking oh i'll spend an hour on a blog post and i look up and it's been like six hours you lost yourself yeah like that was the writing and so i didn't even know i like it was never a plan it was never like oh i'm going to be a new york times bestseller in five years i'm gonna do this and this and it's like no it's just like writing makes me feel really good i feel proud of myself i enjoy the process and i can't wait to do it again and so you know that's what you just keep hammering on and at the greatness is the side effect you know it's like if you if you find that then the success and and all the accolades and stuff like that will come naturally like it will be the you know it'll be the collateral right exactly i i i hear you and i'm excited to talk about this because there are so many people that tell me that they have these big dreams or what they want but they're unwilling to do the work right it's too hard to make it happen they want the end result but they don't have the 10 years of the process it takes to get there and i have an exercise called the perfect day exercise where i have people say okay do you really want this walk through what a perfect day would look like for you where you'd find the most joy the most happiness yeah the most fulfillment in a uh you know your entire day hour by hour walk me through what is your perfect day look like yeah what brings you that joy so i try to get people in the mindset okay dream like crazy big dreams yeah but make sure the journey in the process of spending 10 years to make it happen is something you love because it may take forever yeah the bigger the dream the longer it's going to take usually yeah and if you're if you go through your perfect day exercise and you're actually not excited to work 12 hours a day yeah something then it's probably not the dream for you yeah and it comes back to that honesty with yourself like the example i use in my book is you know for most of my younger life i wanted to be a musician and um i had all these huge dreams and fantasies you know about being on stage and rocking out and like you know being like having this amazing album and and um i mean i had this dream for like six or eight years like even after i started my business you know when i started my business the first couple years i was like oh i'm gonna do this to like make some money and then i'm gonna go back and do the music thing you know um in my head it was it was all just kind of like a means to the to the end that was the music and i got to my my late 20s or the second half of my 20s and i just i had to be like really honest with myself like because i like i had friends who were back in music school and they were actually doing things like they were their bands were getting signed and they were like doing stu like doing studio gigs and they were playing shows and and i was like wait a second they're actually like out doing it you know action i've been i'm thinking about it i've been sitting in my room for the last six years like saying you know what i'm gonna do one day i'm gonna be a big musician on stage so like i had to be very honest with myself like you know like i don't think i actually like this like you know because if i did i'd be doing it right you know i think i just like the vision of myself i i like i i like this fantasy that being on stage but you don't like practicing for three hours a day right guitar piano or something yeah or spending all my my money on equipment right like hauling it through rehearsals and you know seven people to show up for a gig once a month yeah like years exactly like it just it didn't happen no one cared about you you know so it was hard to let that go but i mean i think in hindsight that was i think i built that dream that dream was like something that i kind of constructed when i was younger to get me through some hard times and once i got older and i was actually committed to to my business and my writing and other things in my life i had to let it go i had to be like you know this isn't this isn't serving me anymore and in fact it's like i'm kidding myself and your mind space is somewhere else in the fantasy land that you're not actually implementing taking action on as opposed to putting all of your energy and mind space into the current passion or dream that you did have right absolutely and we only have so much mind space in a day i think yeah in our lifetime totally if we're thinking about something else we're not working or acting towards then we're missing out on what we have right in front of us you talk about self-improvement and success and how they often occur together but it doesn't that doesn't mean they're the same thing yeah so why uh why do we assume they are i think i think because they often occur together um i think a lot of us experience in our own lives when we have a breakthrough with ourselves you know with certain belief or certain pattern in ourselves or we could get over a fear we see kind of the external success in our lives jump up a little bit and so we just kind of start assuming that the two are the same thing um which is just we do that about a lot of things um but it but it's not necessarily i i think in a lot of ways you know for certain people it might be a breakthrough in their self and their their self growth might precipitate like less success you know maybe they realize that you know that 80 hours a week they're working as a lawyer like is is the thing that's making them miserable and so the breakthrough means like giving up that career or giving up all that money or giving up the status that comes along with it um you know you get people who become very attached to material things um you know or maybe they don't have their their priorities or their attention in their life like a line the way that that it would be more healthy and and part of that growth requires them to step down a little bit and step back and um i think this is one area that you know it gets in the self-help world it gets a little a little dangerous because it's it's fun to think about you know hey you can have this huge breakthrough and make a million dollars and it's but a lot of times that big breakthrough requires you letting go wanting to make a million dollars right so you get kind of this weird catch-22 thing going on yeah a lot of times yeah what would you say is the thing that you're struggling with the most right now uh you know honestly this i you know i'm so proud of how well it's done um dude the pressure like the pressure of what what's next or what's you know it's you know we all like to over the course of our career i think and i think everybody's like this anything you do you know the next thing you always want to be improving of course you always want the next thing to be better yes uh but you're like nine months on the new york times list right so it's like how do you top that yeah and it's it's it's sold i think it's i think it's the best-selling audio book of all time oh my gosh um yeah it sold a million copies and i think eight and a half months a hardcover yeah holy cow yeah congrats man that's huge and so yeah i mean it's like that's massive it is massive but it's funny because now i'm i'm it's been almost a year and now i'm starting to look at okay what's the next project gonna be uh how can i top this massive hit well in in my natural inclination because this has served me for the first 10 years my career is like all right what's the next step and i'm looking at and i'm like you know let's be honest you know the the the level of commercial success this book is experienced is something that it's like it happens maybe two or three times a year and the entire publishing like you know there's maybe two three books each year that that do that that do this and as an author the chance of you hitting that twice is really hard yeah it's like it's you know and so much of the book's success is probably also out of my control um i mean it's a great title it's a great cover it's a great but i mean of the yeah but the world it's like yeah but all yeah a lot of it is the timing um a lot of it is just kind of like where we are as a culture right now um it's so yeah it's it's i've had to be honest with myself that like you know it mark it's very unlikely this is gonna happen twice and that's and then on top of that i've got you know publishers my agent uh a bunch of other people who want to do stuff with me and they're like all right you know you did this let's do something bigger yeah let's let's match it or like hey this guy just sold this many books for harper like let's bring him in to do this with us and you know maybe our thing will blow up and it's really hard it's like the the pressure is real man and so i've been kind of the last few months if you gotta you gotta listen to your own book you know yeah don't kill i know it's so hard man because then you're like well i'm not doing as good yeah maybe i'm not i'm not smart anymore if it's not doing as well right exactly so there's all these kind of like assumptions or you know i guess operating principles i've had for years now in my career and i'm having to like tear them out of myself you know kind of be like hey dude let go of that like that's not serving you anymore um and it's been hard it's it's i've for a couple months now i've kind of been playing mind games with myself you know just trying to get myself in the right headspace of like you know hey it's all right if you know the next book doesn't have to be like this one or my next project doesn't have to like match this and um and being okay with that i mean like yeah i mean a million copies in nine months i think that's more than what tim did for four hour work week yeah i think i think it took me years to get that yeah it's it's massive it's insane what and what about the audio books is there more how many too many downloads there or is that all encompassing all books um i don't know the exact number with the audiobook but um but yeah the audible people told us uh back in the spring they said it's the most downloaded book on the like crazy dude and the entire audience yeah which is like some nice royalty checks off of those right yeah i know what that's like dude this is amazing i remember when i interviewed liz gilbert she had mentioned similar because eat pray love was like this massive yeah i think it was like 10 million sales it turned into a movie with um what's her name julie roberts julia robertson she was like julia roberts playing me and it was just everywhere for years and she was like there was no way i was gonna be able to create something that that good yeah like i had to kind of come to my senses that this might be the most popular piece of work i ever do yeah type of feeling you know maybe something which is hard right you always want to think your best things ahead of you and and then suddenly when you start thinking that it might not be that odd that starts messing with your motivation it starts messing with your identity it starts mess like it's it's a mind [ __ ] and uh it's funny you mention her because she did a ted talk about that i've watched that ted talk like three times this summer like really yeah because it's because like i'm a fan of hers like she's great and and i was talking to a friend and she's like yeah liz gilbert did a ted talk about like her life after eat pray love and how she couldn't like she couldn't write for like a year afterwards because it was just this insane thing that she thought she had to live up to and so yeah i watched that talk a couple times and yeah it's real like it's it's hard it's it's it messes with your head it really does um and then all the people who are not are struggling right now yeah they're all like oh yeah you sold a million copies of your book get over it it's so hard man well that's the other funny thing too um and i talk about this a little bit in my book you know i i point out i'm like you know problems never go away you know like warren buffett still has money problems um you know he still probably stresses out at night and and worries about things but nobody's crying a tear for warren buffett and uh you know that's that's kind of the weird thing with success sometimes is is success as amazing as it is and and as much as it can transform your life it brings its own stresses with it you know it's it's like the biggie song no money more problems like it's it brings its own set of problems with it but the thing is is when you success problems like not many people are going to sympathize with that you know like no not many people are sitting around going man poor warren buffett like lost 2 billion on that deal like man that must be really hard for like nobody's saying that you know like it's there's no sympathy for that the internal challenges that we face as human beings no matter what happens the more successful we come we still have internal battles challenges stresses with all the money in the world you know all the friends in the world all the power they're still gonna be stressed yeah we don't know how to deal with our inner battles yeah then we're gonna be overwhelmed yeah and we're gonna suffer yeah so it's a constant awareness of letting things go of working on ourselves i think in a positive way where we can enjoy the process and where we're at no matter what's happening yeah it's it it's a never-ending thing it's um you know another thing i say is is uh you know growth is not getting rid of problems it's simply getting better problems you know yeah you never get to this point where you don't have problems in your life you just trade in your problems for slightly better problems right that's basically what growth is you mentioned uh in the book about you know if you're the problem is you're overweight or you're not healthy and then you go get a gym membership and you have to wake up early and you're like sweaty all the time and you're like you have a new problem yeah right it's like but it's a better one but it's a better one you're getting healthy but you have this other challenge well i have to get up earlier and i have to bring my clothes so i can shower at the gym and get to work on time or whatever it is so it's like a different set of problems and challenges to get a better result though yeah right of course what how do we eliminate problems in our life then or can we not i i don't think you can i i don't think there's a such a thing as a problem for free life and i think i don't think we would want to eliminate pro because i i make the argument that it's that process of solving our problems or overcoming our problems that's what that's like the engine that generates happiness um and so when you actually remove problems it creates its own special kind of misery you know like if you imagine like the rich housewife who just sits at the pool all day like it or or the peop the person who watches tv 10 hours a day like it's there's a lack of problems also creates you know it prevents that engine of happiness because like you need prob like the problems you you need the problems because that's what generates the meaning and if you don't have the meaning then you know everything just feels pointless and you're like well why do anything i'll just go sit at the pool right um so you need that that meaning you know it comes back to that what i was saying about the stories that we wrap around our positive and negative experiences you know like that meaning is what creates those those powerful stories that that pushes us us forward and right um you know makes our makes us feel like our life is well lived yeah i mean if you have a trust fund and you don't you know make meaning with your life you just live off the money of someone else yeah it doesn't feel like you've done anything yeah you haven't accomplished anything you haven't mattered in the world you haven't contributed in any positive way right yeah contributions probably one of the most important things for us when we're contributing to our family or our community or in a bigger way having that contribution is powerful absolutely yeah and so there are a lot of miserable housewives right yeah who are who aren't and trust fund kids right trust me kids who aren't choosing to use their their intelligence their talents to make an impact yeah i think it's important to have that awareness that we should be trying to make an impact the best way we can yeah for sure um talk about the feedback loop loop from hell how do we get it out of it how do we get into it and how do we get out of it so the feedback loop from hell is it is a thing i talk about in the beginning of my book where we judge our emotions um so you know a lot of us and i know i was raised this way and i think a lot of people are raised this way you know i was raised like certain emotions they're inappropriate or they're just bad like like anger you know you don't get angry or you don't show it um or you don't you know don't be sad like how many times have has like a well-intentioned friend or family member be like don't be sad just don't be sad um and so i think what the effect this kind of has on us is that we judge these negative emotions so we decide that being sad is a bad thing or being angry is a bad thing or you know being feeling guilty is a bad thing and then a funny thing happens because then we start feeling sad about the fact that we feel sad or we start feeling guilty that we feel guilty all the time we're embarrassed or whatever yeah or we feel angry that we're we're anxious that we feel anxious all the time and like and then it just kind of like keeps spiraling we're like god what's wrong with me i'm like i'm always anxious and it just keeps going and going and going and so i call this the feedback loop from hell and the way you short circuit it um is you stop giving a [ __ ] is you stop you stop judging the emotion you know sad like the way the only way you can get out of it is sadness needs to be okay anger needs to be okay uh anxiety needs to be okay you know the question isn't uh it's not necessarily the emotion that is good or bad it's what you do about it um it's how you react to it it's the meaning you know you wall paper around it um because all these emotions again coming back to like the whole pain thing like all these emotions they exist for a reason like they keep us healthy like they're they are natural responses if somebody dies be sad like you're supposed to be sad like that is part of your your your brain and your psychology's way of like processing it digesting it and um you know the more you judge or try to like shut those emotions out like just the worse it becomes yeah hmm [Laughter] what about self-talk yeah what do you think about self-talk do you think it's important to have like a positive mindset and to think positive things throughout the day or do you think it's irrelevant to feeling happiness joy and making an impact i think self-talk can definitely have an effect for people both positive and negative like i imagine if you're always telling yourself good things you probably feel better yeah um and if you're always telling yourself bad things you'll probably feel crappy um i definitely think that is true um i don't necessarily you know again my big focus is is on meaning it's you know i i kind of in the beginning of the book i'm like you know what who cares whether we feel good or bad let's talk about like the meaning or the value that like underlies everything um and i think self-talk is one of those things you can you can you can get yourself into trouble through positive self-talk just as much as you can through negative you know what it comes down to is like how realistic are you being and like what is what is the quality of the meaning that you're putting on this um because i could have i could walk around being like i am the most badass [ __ ] in all of l.a you know like that girl wants me that guy wants to be me like you know i can have positive self-talk all day but that's probably not gonna have a very healthy effect you know if that's what i'm saying you know so it's the character of the self-talk is what i think matters and i think that gets lost a lot um or it's it's something it's more difficult to talk about that yeah um because i think so many people they they just want to they want that quick hit of like make me feel good you know like tell me tell me something to tell myself to make me feel good and it's like you can do that but like you really got to pay attention to you know what what is what's the meaning and and what's the identity you're building for yourself what about belief how does someone build belief in themselves then in order to create and take action on you know something like this i'm assuming you can't write a book this powerful and inspirational and meaningful if you don't believe in yourself so how do you how do you create belief in yourself see i've got a i've got a pretty backwards approach to this it's probably going to be be the opposite of of you or most people you have on here um which is i i don't really i kind of just i don't it's none of my business whether i'm a good author or not um i try not to think about it um because again what i notice is if if i get let in the negative self-talk that will hinder me because i start thinking like well i'm like i'm bad at this and i'm an idiot and i can't do this and but if i if i start wandering off in the positive self-talk like oh i'm the man like everything i write is gold you know that also adds pressure and starts and like that's kind of what i was talking about like the problem with like i don't like thinking i'm great at something i know we're on the school of greatness but like but like that that also it puts pressure on because now that's something you have to live up to and i just try to let go of all of that i just try to say i don't know if i'm good or not i don't really care i have these things that i that i believe are very important for myself and for others and i just try to focus on that yeah um you know i i kind of had an argument recently with my publisher about my next book um you know like they were they don't like they had already pushed in they're like this is what we want yeah it's it's like they're like that girlfriend or boyfriend that's like already planned like your next six vacations by like the third date um like that that was like happening with the next book and i i kind of freaked out i'm like look this is not helping um i appreciate the amount of support you're giving me but like this is just making it worse like this is you know if every time i get an email like oh harper's like spending this and they're assigning this these many people your sales team like and then i sit there and i and like i go to like write i'm like man like pressure yeah i'm like can we just get back to like like let me just focus on the ideas you know i don't want to think about you know all that sort of stuff i i don't want to define myself right um by those sorts of things because one whenever i start to you know like that it starts killing my creativity um so yeah i just try to let go of that yeah um i've actually i've got a section in the book called jokingly called kill yourself which is where i i basically tell people to kind of let go of these narratives of them like you don't know how good like the funny thing about being good or bad at something it's all about where you're standing you know like you know somebody could be watching this and they'd be like man lewis house he's killing it you know and it's like from their perspective like the yardstick that you're they're using they can say that but then all you have to do is go get a different yardstick like a warren buffett and he's like yeah or like howard stern or something and it's like oh it was house yeah whatever man so it's it it's all arbitrary it's all where it's all invented and um and so i try to just like let go of that and and get back to like okay what is something that's like valuable that i can contribute like you were saying you know like what's an idea that i think is important can change lives can change my life write that and then you know let everybody else decide whether i'm good or not yeah no none of my business how does um so what are you what is your vision next because you know you listen to liz gilbert's ted talk about times are you working on new ideas or are you kind of like let me just be in the present enjoy the moment yeah for the year or two that it's gonna ride and then man i wish i could do that i wish i could do that i wish i could just like i mean you're probably getting big advance offers for the next book yeah because now you can kind of demand it and say you know write the seven figure checks yeah i mean the money listen the money's great no complaints um you know uh i'm playing with ideas for the next book uh i'm kind of exploring new things um i kind of made the the the mistake i made this year was i got a little excited you know all that stuff you just said about big advanced checks and all the promotion and everything i got a little bit excited the beginning of the year and i was like yeah i got this idea let's go you know and what i discovered a few months later was like i kind of i kind of put myself in a bind because what i discovered is like or what i remembered is a big part of my creative process is coming up with like three or four bad ideas before i get to the good one and so i got a few months in and i'm like oh wait i think this is actually a bad idea like i want to toss the whole you know i want to basically start over from scratch and so that was kind of part of the you know telling my publisher like dude back off like i need some time i need some time to just suck for a while like yeah you know like that's that's in i think that's an important part of any creative process like you need to be able to fail without repercussions you know i told my editor i'm like look like if i want to like delete a chapter or like rewrite an entire section like i don't want to feel like i can't do that because i think it's important to feel like you can do that um yeah and get back to doing what you do best which is writing articles doing research you know absolutely sharing ideas see what sticks an idea sticks online and it shares like by everyone you're like okay maybe i can lean into this a little more write a few more articles on it and yeah oh now i've got the basis of my book yeah absolutely yeah have you been right i see you've been sharing a lot of the archives over the last few months oh man you're called out jordan's like from the archives goody but you know you're like still relevant i mean it's all evergreen it's not like it's timely or something sure you know it needs to be at a certain time but um uh gotta get that traffic you know yeah i know are you writing new content or new articles so it's funny you bring that up i i've kind of now that i've gotten all that stuff resolved yeah you know this past few weeks um i have been going back i've been spending the past two weeks just like just doing blog content and doing exactly what you're saying like all right back to basics man yeah i've got a handful of ideas i think they're pretty cool i'm gonna throw them up as our articles see what happens see if it gets people talking if people are really into it um so yeah there's gonna be a lot more blog and online content coming over the next few months that's great um which i feel really good about i fee i feel like everything is kind of balanced is being restored to the force sure yeah that's good removing the pressure from the publishers and all this yeah i mean it's just it's been it's been a wild experience both you know on both sides like it's just it's surreal like it's amazing some of some like the good things that happen it's completely surreal and it's just scrambles your brain and then you know and then two weeks later it's like pressure you've never felt before the publisher's like you know we're doing this and this this it's like whoa time out right what's the been the craziest experience you've had since it's came out um well apparently chris hemsworth is a big fan of it um i think i saw him you posted a photo on instagram of him holding it i think yeah so he posted it and it was completely unprovoked he posted it on instagram and facebook uh and he wrote this like long thing i mean it was like he loved it i mean he was just gushing about it and i was like that's crazy like how does that happen yeah you know um so that's that's been pretty awesome um getting stopped on the street yeah the first few times was like whoa yeah weird yeah really weird yeah um weird stuff like my dad was walking around with the book and and somebody's like he in a restaurant like somebody like came up to him i love that book yeah and my dad's like my son wrote it and the guy's like yeah whatever that's hilarious wow yeah so i'm sure you got a ton of big press and features and all these different places right yeah i think the f word scared people off yeah so it's been hit and miss neck in that arena um which is weird you would think they would be like jumping on the bandwagon but it's controversial yeah yeah yeah um it's funny there was the only time it appeared it like it was mentioned in new york times it was basically this old guy complaining about how many books have the f word in the title these days really and i was like seriously this is this is what the times is running wow but it sounds like it's been an amazing journey yeah man um a couple final questions for you sure um talk to me about can anyone do anything great or meaningful from a victim mentality or as a victim mentality the quickest way to die i think uh i think a victimhood mentality i think by definition yet you can't really because i think once you adopt the victim mentality you are basically deciding you were powerless you were saying like this thing is happening to me and there's nothing i can do about it like to me that's the definition of a victimhood mentality like deciding you are powerless um and so yeah i think it's it's it's basically impossible i think the first step to accomplishing anything big or small whatever um is acknowledging that you are in control that you get to decide that you there is this even if it's the smallest thing you know i can do this i can decide to work on this um and it's hard because that that requires taking on responsibility you know being like okay like this is my thing now like i i have to do this i think it's easier and it kind of worries me because i i think our culture is getting lulled into this complacency of just being like oh all this horrible stuff's happening and but it's not my fault you know yeah so i'm just going to complain about it it's like and do nothing yeah and it's it's like no you gotta take responsibility get out there do something take ownership absolutely yeah i agree i think there's a lot of people who are living in that victim mentality maybe not in all areas of their life but in some area of their life and they're like well there's just nothing i can do yeah i don't know the time and all the energy yeah resources it's like well you're not gonna do anything if you think that way yeah yeah totally but if you can create it and say i do have the time let me make it yeah i do have the resources let me start asking people you know whatever it may be yeah well and there are people that something terrible legitimately happens to them you know and and all of us something terrible happens yeah like something it's everybody we all suffer tragedy and trauma at some point um but and that may be you know and you yes you may be a victim like in that moment when that thing is happening but you know a day later a week later a year later 10 years later like at some point you have to be like hey it happened but like what am i going to do now yeah you know what am i going to do about it yeah what would you say is your biggest fear moving forward [Laughter] just flopping at whatever i do next totally really yeah it's um you know there's a funny thing and i'm sure you experience this too like any anything entrepreneurial that you do you always have this irrational fear that like it's gonna be over like then like you know like what what like whatever the next thing is gonna be it's just like it's gonna crash and burn and you know whatever it's it's all gonna be over it's like oh this was just a fad or i got lucky or i was in the right place at the right time and and there's always like every entrepreneur i know has that kind of like lingering doubt in the back of their mind um and it's funny because it just doesn't doesn't go away like my my dad he started a plastics business back in the 60s um and he's still going now he's he just turned 70. wow and i talked to him once and and he's like he's like i've been doing this almost 50 years and he's like i'm still terri like i'm afraid our biggest accounts are are gonna leave us i i'm terrified of a lawsuit there's a competitor could open up any day and do our formulas better like right he's still like yeah it could all be over next year you know like but i think a little bit of that anxiety is is useful yeah it keeps you keeps you on your toes i feel like the way you will fail or have a failure or not as a good a success the next time is if you care too much about what everyone thinks yeah if you literally like give a [ __ ] yeah except and try to be like i'm gonna write it in a way that like this is everyone exactly as opposed to being like no this is what i believe it this is my counterintuitive feelings on this specific topic yeah here's why and you back it up yeah i think if you were like well i don't care if anyone likes this right but here's what's worked for me yeah and here's what's worked for other people yeah i want to write in that style i think it'll do well yeah so the the lord of not giving a f about you know relationships or money or whatever it is i don't know but something like that yeah or the counterintuitive approach to making money you know whatever yeah so yeah um give me credit for that next idea yeah okay royalty exactly is there anything that you um that you wish people would ask you that they don't ask hmm that's a really good question um it's one of those questions too i feel like there is something but like i can't like it's i've probably done other interviews where i'm like why isn't this guy asking this but like now that i'm put on the spot i can't think of it or is there anything that you really wish you got to share or talk about that you don't reveal i know you talk a lot about your vulnerabilities but is there anything that you feel like you wish people knew about you more yeah i i don't know i'm kind of an open book um you know i will say like i'm i'm genuinely excited about your book i'm not just like you i'm not just plugging you because i'm on your show like i really am i was telling you before the show like i was i took a stab at writing a book like this yeah like five years ago because i i come from you know i got my my roots are men's dating advice basically yes and um you know so i ran like a men's dating advice site for a number of years and um and i worked with a lot of clients i worked with a lot of men who were struggling um i mean they came to me because they were struggling in their with their relationships but you know a lot of times they're also struggling professionally and all these other ways and and um doing all the research back then like i came to a lot of the same conclusions that you do and uh it's a scary topic it is man it's super vulnerable it is because i kind of reveal my all my weaknesses and every aspect of being a man yeah for my whole life but you know i'm i'm glad you like you're the right one to do it because like the reason i gave it up so i started it and you know i had a lot of very similar conclusions and a lot of the similar points but it was i felt weird because i was coming from like my big mask as you would say like my big thing my big insecurity as a man was always around like like i was the i was like the party playboy you know like i was out drinking all the time i was chasing girls all the time um and that was my way of like overcompensating like proving myself all the time and so whatever i was going to write was going to be rooted in that and unfortunately like it's still just really like not socially acceptable you know and it's just not as like i you know you coming from like an athletics background coming from a business background like those are much more you know in saying like hey like this is an issue that men deal with like this is something that i dealt with yeah you know when i was writing and it was like hey i spent like five years drinking and just banging girls and let me tell you it sucks you know like it just doesn't it didn't sound good and it wasn't something i wanted to like um it didn't feel like something that was going to like really resonate with a lot of men or like get the point across yeah um well yeah and tucker max kind of did that with his books but it was more of like him bragging about it yeah which did well that's what sold it so well right yeah yeah and then when he kind of stopped bragging about it yeah it didn't do as well yeah you know yeah yeah i mean it's it's there's still a judgment there there's still like you know oh he's a sleaze bag you know like you can't how seriously can we take them and i didn't really want to invite that into my career but i i also just felt like it wasn't going to be as powerful like i i think i think what's going to make yours more powerful is you know the the stuff around you know because what you excelled in the athletics and everything like that is like that's the mainstream pressure yeah that's put on board all the kids who were athletes who grew up and feeling that they couldn't like show their emotions yeah they had to like be a man an early age they couldn't be a [ __ ] or whatever it is you had to like just not feel pain all these different things that hold us back from showing emotion releasing certain things that allow us to be vulnerable yeah allow us to connect with other human beings yeah and that create more anger and resentment inside of us for a long term that we're unable to express it in a loving way yeah or in a a safe way in a healthy way yeah healthy way yeah we express it through fighting through screaming through punching walls and thinking that's like the manly thing you're supposed to do right and i think i appreciate you saying that i'm the right one to talk about it i just feel like a lot of guys could relate to someone who looks like me who's been through experiences like me yeah as a jock looking dude who played a ton of sports yeah who's you know built businesses and things like that i think hopefully i'm gonna be able to resonate to a lot of men yeah that would would never listen to an oprah of renee brown yeah deep chopra yeah um so hopefully hopefully yeah you know i have no idea i appreciate you endorsing it because yeah man i'm excited to get it out there i actually think a lot of women are gonna buy it like tons of women are gonna buy it yeah well actually so i i self-published uh so my my dating advice book it's called models attract women through honesty and uh one of the things uh like one of the biggest i guess like things that that i guess one of the things that makes me feel the best about it is i get emails all the time from women who are like i bought this for my brother i bought this for my husband i bought this for my son yeah um because like this like he's having trouble you know he's having relationship problems or he's having trouble meeting women and like i there's a lot of scummy stuff out there yeah but it's like a woman reads it and she's like yeah this is what the guy i love or i care about like should should be reading yeah yeah so you'll probably get a lot of that too yeah we'll see which is great who knows how to deal did you have an idea that this was going to sell a million copies and no no absolutely not we have no idea it could be massive could be nothing yeah right you could be like yeah you really have no idea but uh i feel excited about it because i'm proud about like being so open and yeah and giving an amazing effort yeah at trying to connect with people that i feel like are struggling the most yeah which are the men in our society right now specif specifically with the challenges and uh our political leadership where there's a lot of controversy and you know all the the hate crimes and everything it's just like where is it coming from yeah you know how can we move forward in a place of love and uplift all of humanity that's my mission yeah so i feel like it starts within i had to look within myself first and say wow there's probably a lot of men who are facing a similar challenge yeah there are um i appreciate your support there yeah um this is a question called the three truths okay you've written how many articles now oh god hundreds i don't know hundreds of articles you've got a new york time best-selling smashing hit with a million copies sold in the first year which probably one of 20 people have done in the history of time in the first nine months um and and let's imagine that you've achieved everything you want to achieve yeah which i know you don't have any big dreams you keep it neutral but let's say you achieve everything you want to sure and it's your last day for you many many years from now okay that's your last day you're a hundred and how old you want to be okay and you've written many best-selling projects all the content you want to write has been out there you've done all the research you've got all the answers for yourself yeah you shared it with the world but for whatever reason it's all erased okay no one has access to any book you've ever done or any article okay and you've got a piece of paper and a pen yeah to write down three truths yeah three things you know to be true about everything you've learned and this is all that the world would be able to have to remember you by yeah what would be those lessons or those three truths three man um no pressure no pressure um yeah so i mean the first one that comes to mind is what really and it feels so cliche to say out loud but it is a really profound thing it took me a long time to realize is that really at the end of the day that what really matters is the relationships with the people in your life you know success accolades money having fun like these are all great things um but if you don't have people close to you to share them with or to support or help support you pretty much anything will eventually feel empty [Music] so that would be a big one second one i would say is that anything worthwhile is going to require some sort of sacrifice um and a lot of people you know everybody's heard that and i think when people hear that they think of that they think of in terms of like oh yeah sacrifice like you gotta work hard you gotta stay at the office late you gotta like and that's true but i think there's actually a a deeper and more difficult sacrifice especially for our generation which is to commit to something it's like make it meaningful and worthwhile and and do it extremely well become great at it you have to be willing to give up maybe other dreams or things that you want um you know there came a point in my career where i was like you know this writing thing is going really well you know that was actually what killed my music dreams was the writing because it was like the writing thing's going so well i would be an idiot to like stop and like go go start a band or something like you know it and so i had to let it go i had to be like you know it's just not gonna happen um and and there was a grieving process for that but it was like it was okay you know i moved on yeah um and so i think that's kind of that's the sacrifice is like as you especially as you get older you have to like realize that there's just some things that you're never gonna do and that's okay like we all have to decide that at some point um third one uh oh my god your last the last truth that mark manson will ever leave yeah um i don't know man just uh don't give a [ __ ] yeah don't give a [ __ ] i don't know vulnerability a lot of stuff we've been talking yeah yeah um i guess you you always have you always you can always choose like you always have the power to decide you always have the power to decide like what something means um you always have the power to decide what to do next there's no situation where you aren't empowered in some way yeah those are great i love those well i want to acknowledge you mark for constantly reinventing yourself being open and vulnerable and taking the time to write something that matters to you yeah and i'm so glad that it matters to so many other people as well but just your commitment to constantly doing the work yeah you've been doing this for years now and you're seeing the results come through it's it's amazing and i'm super excited for you so i'm going to acknowledge you for your vulnerability by constantly opening up yeah and showing other people how they can open up as well because i think that's one of the most important things yeah it's not trying to act like you're better than you are or more important than you are or perfect yeah and by doing work that matters it's really meaningful so i acknowledge you for that man yeah appreciate it um make sure you guys get the book we have one final question make sure you get the subtle art of not giving a [ __ ] uh a counterintuitive approach to living a good life by mark manson the mega hit um and where do you hang out online the most since you're not really on social media that much but where can we connect with you and say hi and tell you how amazing this is uh so my website markmanson.net um got all sorts of articles and cool like pdfs and ebooks and stuff uh so check that out and uh social media facebook dot com mark manson that um i actually do post there and there will be new stuff posted so your facebook's great you're posting very soon yeah mark manson net on facebook and then if you want to come to my instagram and once a month you'll get something and see a picture once a month very cool man well i'm excited for this and um the final question for you is what's your definition of greatness definition of greatness i would say is i would say it is the feeling that oh man it's one of those things that's like i have it in my head but i gotta get the right words to like i would say my definition of greatness is simply um the experience of living your potential um having having an idea or a vision um and then actually like bringing that into reality you know whatever it is it could be like hosting a pta meeting you know it could be writing a bestseller it could be starting a business could be um tutoring your kids like it you know it's having a vision for yourself um and for the people you care about and then actually like realizing that that's what i would say i love it yeah mark manson thanks man appreciate you you

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 174,649

Keywords: lewis howes, mark manson, the subtle art of not giving a fuck, the school of greatness, do more, dream less, create real happiness, ex football player, inteview, 2017, vulnerability, tips, model, ted, dating, women, podcast, say no, enterpreneur, book, author, ny times bestelling author, professional arena football player, massivly successful, success, self improvement, media, negativity matters, 524, blogger, self-help

Id: -7FUHsm04TQ

Length: 71min 37sec (4297 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 16 2017